Category: Beans

Avatar Town Meeting

Good day gentlemen.

You have been invited here to address the fact that Chris doesn’t know who Steve Martin is.

Given the multiple film, stand up, literary and other banjo accolades Steve Martin has achieved in his 40 odd years in the limelight, Chris must have hidden his face in a wardrobe all this time. We all know that if he watches any films he will explode but there are other means by which to know of the name Steve Martin.

Please feel free to also bring to light any other matters worthy of discussion. Zingers aimed in the general direction of Kevin are positivity encouraged.

Avatar New beans, please

“One! Ha ha ha. Two! Ha ha ha. Three! Ha ha ha.” The immortal wisdom of the Count.

Here on the Beans, our counting is not done by a furry purple vampire, but by the Bean Counter, an ingenious piece of machinery made from old sofa springs and a second-hand nuclear reactor that we found in a car boot sale. For more than four years now it’s been faithfully counting up our posts and generating new genetically-modified beans and peas as a reward for our performance, while also disgorging between eight and twelve tons of a resinous toxic by-product into the picturesque River Swale each day.

The highly complicated algorithm by which it awards beans has remained the same since early 2014, so it’s no surprise that earlier this year there were calls for an overhaul of the system to better reflect the realities of blogging in the futuristic world of 2018.

The point of the Bean Counter was never to create a level playing field, but rather to produce a playing field with carefully chosen hills and crevices so that we all stand a chance of scoring a Bean each month according to our various blog posting habits. Critics of the existing system pointed out that it was far easier for Ian to score a Bean than anyone else, and that Kev’s time-consuming building projects meant that three posts in a month was an unattainably high bar for him to reach.

I am delighted to announce, as a result, that major engineering works have been completed and the Bean Counter is now operating a completely new set of rules.

  • Kev will now score a Bean if he makes two (2) posts in a month.
  • Ian will now score a Bean if he makes precisely three (3) or four (4) posts in a month.
  • Chris will continue to score a Bean if he makes four (4) or more posts in a month.

Some would say that these new rules should begin operation from this month onwards, and that existing scores should be left alone. Perhaps they should. But I had a go at that and it was really difficult, so the new rules now apply to all previous months as well, causing a major recasting of our historical Bean Counts.

  • Kev has gained six (6) additional beans for months in which he made two posts.
  • Ian has lost ten (10) beans for months in which he only made two posts.

This is deeply and inherently unfair, which is unfortunate but unavoidable without further major re-engineering work that will just be an absolute faff.

Your comments, detailed feedback and outright anger will be welcome in the comments section below, but may not amount to much.

Avatar New: Pouring Beans Fragrances

Look at you. You smell. It’s true – I can smell you from here. What you need is a powerful cosmetic fragrance that will mask your horrendous body odour and the presence of three-day-old kedgeree stuck in your teeth.

Luckily, Pouring Beans has just launched its new line of unisex fragrances. To celebrate launch day, you can get 10% of any of our new toiletries when you order online using the offer code “I REEK”.

Beans No. 5

The warm, homely aroma of uncooked baked beans straight from the tin is unmistakeable in Beans No. 5, with a musky hint of black pepper and overtones of jasmine. It’s the ideal date night fragrance to impress a loved one, a loved-one-to-be or a high-class escort. This stylish eau de toilette is presented in an etched glass bottle in the shape of an open tin of beans. £79.99 (50ml).

Eau de Pouring Body Mist

Make Eau de Pouring Body Mist part of your morning bathroom routine and enjoy its light, fresh scent throughout the day. The dark, sour smell rising from the Character Hatch™ on a hot day is made brighter and sweeter with the musk of wild zorses and the refreshing zing of lemons. £24.99 (150ml) or £49.99 (gift pack: 100ml, presentation box, zorse-striped flannel).

Haricots

Share your bean-based bouquet with your loved one by wearing these delightful matching fragrances for him and for her. Bold, yet playful, both are based on the unmistakable and unforgettable smell of wet plaster and gloss paint from Kev’s house. Haricots Homme carries the bold, earthy overtones of Gary Wilmot’s fading career, whoever he is, while Haricots Femme is lighter, with just a hint of the matted fur lining Flat Kitty’s basket. £39.99 each (75ml) or £54.99 for both.

Our talented Smellologists are now working on a new, secret celebrity fragrance endorsed by Smidge Manly.

Avatar New: the Keep Kev Ill campaign

Since Kev came down with a mystery illness – possibly conjunctivitis, possibly eye flu, possibly his brain leaking out of his face, we don’t know – he has been present here on The Beans much more regularly than usual. That’s had the unusual effect of making the “comments” section of recent blog posts, normally reserved for a conversation between me and Ian, to have a third voice.

I for one have enjoyed his increased presence, and having the number of comments he normally posts in a year or so all appear within one week has been a welcome change.

The question now is: how do we lock in these benefits, so that this magnificent period doesn’t come to a terrible and disappointing end when he goes back to work?

My solution is the Keep Kev Ill campaign. The aim of this campaign is simple: to supply Kev with an ongoing supply of debilitating but not life-threatening illnesses so that he remains at home, off sick from work, where he can continue contributing to the Beans. Who knows, after a couple of months he might even write a blog post.

I have started this important initiative by getting some people at work who have a cold to cough into an envelope, which I have posted to his home address. Please join me in sending more low-level biohazardous material to Micklefield, for the benefit of everyone who visits The Beans. Thank you.

Avatar Official Beans

WE NEED THREE. WE ARE THREE.

We are, indeed, three. Nothing is more recognisable with the Beans brand than our shapely, oddly blank faces. This has been put on everything from lunch boxes to dinner jackets to tiny boxes of matches. We have whored ourselves out for every manner of item available on the market.

Some might say that we have stretched ourselves too far. Others may say that we haven’t stretched enough. I would say that bag of crisps I just ate wasn’t large enough.

What we need is someone else to shoulder the burden, or uncomfortable responsibility, of having to promote ourselves repeatedly. We need someone who is willing to do absolutely anything to spread the word of our masters, to go above and beyond, to increase the profit margin and appease the shareholders.

This is Beans.

He was originally called Yukiko, because that is a nice name, but since his birth he has taken on the name ‘Beans’. This is also a good name and it also means that he can now be the new poster boy for our website moving forward into 2018.

I will be commissioning small, cheaply-made soft toys based on his likeness and these will be sold in certain branches of Booths supermarket in the North West of England. They will be limited edition and highly sought after so demand is more than likely expected to exceed the supply, and the second-hand market will soar higher than an eagle strapped to the back of a Boeing 747.

If the toys work then perhaps some jazzy socks may be on the cards.

Avatar 2018 State of the Beans Address

Thank you, thank you. You’re very kind. Please be seated.

My name is Professor Sir Elbert Louche OBE, and it is a great pleasure to return to the Beans for a fourth year to deliver the annual State of the Beans Address. As in previous years, the information I am about to share with you is the result of detailed scientific investigation that has been ongoing for the past twelve months.

We at the University of the Internet take this very seriously. We have all been wearing white coats and goggles, and there were absolutely loads of bunsen burners involved.

Unfortunately, for the second year in a row the news is not good and I have to report a decline in Beans activity. A total of 84 posts were made to the Beans in 2017, down ten on the 2016 total, and the comment situation is no better, with 989 comments made, a year-on-year reduction of almost 400.

This increasingly slapdash approach to blog posting has not gone unnoticed and the Home Office are threatening to put the website into special measures unless the situation improves during 2018. Nobody wants that. Standard procedure for “special measures” websites are to replace all content with cat pictures and open the comments section to cretins who can’t spell and always use emoji instead of punctuation. This is a situation to be avoided at all costs.

Here’s the breakdown for each member.

Ian

Ian made 37 posts, four fewer than in 2016. Last year he said he looked forward to “shitting over everyone again in 2017”. He will now be required to submit a written explanation about the lack of progress on this objective. However, he did score 12 beans.

Chris

Chris made 41 posts in total, more than Ian, but they were not consistently spread through the year, meaning he only earned 8 beans. His post count is also down by four on last year’s total. He loses the right to use proper glasses for fizzy drinks and from now on will have to use disposable plastic cups.

Kev

Kev made six posts to the Beans in 2017, fewer than the eight he made in 2016. This comes as no surprise to anyone, though if we wish to grasp at straws to find something in his favour, he came closer to matching his 2016 post count than Chris or Ian. We do not need to discuss Kev’s bean total.

In conclusion, 2017 has been an exceptionally quiet year and unless 2018 sees considerably more posts being made and comments being left, I am going to be quite cross. There is no commemorative goblet for anyone this year, and instead you will find that while you were in here listening to this speech all your cars have been keyed.

Thank you.

Avatar The Book

Rejoice! The Book, bane of the Beans for nine long years, is finished! Now a prestigious company (Pouring Beans Publishing) has rushed out a massive print run (three copies) to an eager and very excited audience (us). It may henceforth be referred to by its title, The Magic Star, or by its actual real genuine ISBN number, 978-1-38-934293-6, or just as “The Book” which is what we’ve been calling it since January 2009.

If reading the actual book is not enough, you can now also read it online, a bit like a modern e-book on a Kindle or something, except it’s just a PDF on the website. It is here in our vastly underused Things section.

Hooray!